Catherine Grum and Sam Patel join BDO as partners

BDO has appointed two partners in its London office. Catherine Grum joins the private client services team, while Sam Patel becomes part of the financial services practice.

For the last five year, Katherine Grum was an employee of KPMG. She led the Big Four firm’s family office services, and its family office centre of excellence – a role which focused on advising enterprising families of all shapes and sizes, giving them access to the breadth of KPMG and sharing best practice and experience from other families.

Prior to this, Grum spent a year at Salamanca Group – where she established and then headed the firm’s private office – and was also Head of Wealth Advisory in the EMEA region for Barclays Wealth Advisory.

Having joined BDO’s private client services team, Grum will now lead BDO's Family Office Services group. Her practice focuses on family offices and enterprising families. She advises families and individuals throughout the process of transitioning wealth, and advises throughout the family office life-cycle, from entrepreneurs to established family offices.

Sam Patel meanwhile joins from Mazars, where he was a Partner specialising in risk and internal audit. In that role, he was responsible for leading and building the UK internal audit practice – involving business development, retaining key clients and internal talent, recruiting and the general operation of the department. He also oversaw a team of 30 staff.

Prior to his eight years at Mazars, Patel was also Group Reporting Manager with Friends Life Group, and a Senior Manager at Deloitte – where he spent almost a decade in the Big Four firm’s audit wing.

Meanwhile, BDO is also growing its ranks in its Australian wing. Earlier in September, the firm announced its first Australian acquisition in over a year, purchasing DBW Group, adding a 13-strong team to its operations in Sydney.